Ave
by DyrneKeeper
Summary: The events of Rosslyn and Gaza, though separated by six years, run parallel to each other. In order to show the raw humanity that underlies them, they have here been woven together.


Author: DyrneKeeper  
Characters: Josh, Donna  
Category: Romance, drama  
Pairing: Josh/Donna  
Rating: Teen  
Summary: The parallel stories of Rosslyn and Gaza.  
Author's Notes: I'm not entirely certain the world needs another story centered on Rosslyn or Gaza but I took a new spin with this one, interweaving the two stories to highlight the raw humanity underlying the drama.

Such a simple phone call. A secretary's calm voice, a stammered response. Then a dial tone, and the click of a receiver.

And the walls came tumbling down.

Donna raced through the dark streets, paying less attention to speed limits and traffic lights than usual. She'd had to ask for directions to the hospital. A year and a half living in D.C., and she'd never bothered to figure out where the hospital was. She'd never thought to. The last time she'd been in a hospital was when her grandmother had died-- years ago. But that last drive, at her parents' summons, was nothing compared to this one. Then, she had known what would happen when she reached the end. Now—she had no idea.

It was the not knowing that was the worst.

The road she was now on was strange to her, and she searched the darkness for landmarks the secretary had mentioned. The streetlights were a strange, fluorescent yellow color she'd always hated: they would bathe the car in a sickly glow, only to plunge Donna into darkness again as she drove past.

They made her stop at a police roadblock, only letting her continue on foot when she showed her ID tag. She walked down the sidewalk to the front doors on unsteady legs, her arms wrapped reflexively around herself, blinking at the brightness that flooded the street.

She didn't know what she had expected, but it wasn't this. Not this holocaust of light: floods, streetlights, office windows, police flashers. Red and blue and white light bounced and spun off the buildings and street and people. Sirens rose and fell in the soft night air, and Donna shivered. It was unreal, the lights and the noise. All this, for one instant of violence.

Sometimes Donna hated the world.

Compared with the outside, the inside of the hospital was silent and still. Somehow, Donna found that even more threatening than the chaos in the street. If she had learned one thing from working in politics, it was this: fear uncontrolled chaos, and fear silence.

Tonight there was both.

Apprehensively Donna approached the waiting room; her fevered haste had burned itself into cold fear, but not knowing was still worse than knowing and she pushed the door open.

Someone was addressing the room as she slipped inside, but stopped talking when she entered. Donna's heart sank as she saw her friends. They looked worried and wearied; their shoulders slumped in some kind of defeat. It couldn't be…

"The President's going to be fine," CJ assured her.

Donna had never felt such relief—but some other part of her mind grappled with the situation. There had been an unspoken 'but…' at the end of CJ's statement, and Donna had to keep someone from completing it. She rattled on about something, not wanting to know the 'but', scared that the 'but' would hurt the most, wanting one more instant of believing everything was fine.

But she didn't believe it. The look CJ gave Toby, Charlie's slumped shoulders, and Sam—Sam looked so sad. She'd never seen him like that. It was as if…

_They're okay, they're all here_, she tried to assure herself. _CJ and Toby and Josh and Sam…_

Something's not right.

_CJ and Toby and Josh…_

If this atmosphere of fear was not for the President, who was it for?

_CJ and Toby and…_

"Donna?"

"It just happened, that's all I know." CJ's voice was gentle, pitying even, but Josh felt like she'd just boxed his ears. _Explosion in Gaza. The CODEL. _Donna.

In front him, the bullpen exploded into movement. He wondered about that—how could they keep going, making calls, tapping for wires, hovering over the news sites, when the world was suddenly hanging by a thread?

This place had always been a hub, a center for news and information. There was nothing he wanted more than to turn his head and see Donna hurrying toward him with a stack of faxes, or stand silently next to her as they watched the story unfold on the news. But Donna wasn't there. She wouldn't watch the news.

She was the news.

Toby's cell phone rang, and the entire bullpen fell silent as he answered it. Andi. Two Congressmen dead.

But what about Donna? Josh had to—

"She was in the car, that…" Toby didn't say it, no one ever said it, there were no words to say it with, but he knew. That burning wreck there, on the screen—Donna was in that?

_Some fatalities_. Was not knowing really worse than knowing?

Something about ambulances. Andi hadn't seen anything else. Please, God, no. Not Donna. No. Two Congressmen were dead. Donna had been with them. How could she be alive?

The office roared on in news and noise, but Josh stood motionless, staring up at the screen, at the smoke rising in the hot sun.

_I let her go._

Donna sank nerveless into a chair, staring at the floor. Josh was shot. Josh was _shot_.

Josh was dying.

Toby hadn't said it, but he hadn't needed to. The look on his face had been enough.

Donna wondered how anyone could not hate the world.

She had looked forward to seeing Josh at the hospital. She would have sat down next to him, and he would have explained everything to her, and when he had run out of explanations they would have sat there, silent, but safe. But now an explosion had rocked her core—their core—and no explanation could save them. No words would fix it.

She didn't remember when she'd started praying. It wasn't eloquent or articulate or original. But it was the only prayer she could remember: the Ave Maria, the Hail Mary; the prayer Josh had unwittingly taught her, playing Schubert in his office until all hours that one night.

_Ave Maria, gratia plena, dominus tecum, benedictus tu…_

…_In mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris…_

That damn song. It had gotten stuck in his head sometime that morning, and had been running through his mind all day. Josh slammed the receiver he'd been holding back down into its cradle and collapsed in his chair, his face in his hands. He'd been on the phone for—how long? Hours at least—he had an entire building of people on the phone, for God's sake, and no one had found out anything. No one could tell him anything.

How? He wondered. How could they not know? Donna—she had been there, in the car. They had taken her somewhere. Why didn't anyone know where?

_Ave Maria, mater dei, ora pro nobis, ora pro nobis peccatoribus_. Pray for us sinners.

_What sin, God? What sin did I commit? First it was Joanie, then Dad. The President, too. You took my family. You're killing the people I love. And, God, it's my fault! I ran out of the fire. I left Dad. I let Donna go. If she…it'll be my fault. God forgive me! What did I do?_

"Josh?" CJ knocked softly on the doorframe. "How're you doing?

He shrugged, not raising his head from his hands. "No one knows anything. They can't tell me anything." He could find a million people, staffers and senators and supporters and enemies, in an instant. But he couldn't find the one person…

"I know. I'm sorry, Josh." She turned to leave again, at a loss for words. She'd lose a friend, too.

"I should have…" At his words CJ stopped, looked back over her shoulder. Josh was staring off into space.

"Should have what? Josh?" Josh just shook his head.

"Never mind."

"You're not going to be able to see much of him," Abbey told Donna gently. "There's doctors and a lot of machines around him. It's going to look like chaos but it's really very organized." Donna nodded numbly to show that she understood, but Abbey wondered how much she'd actually heard until she spoke.

"How many?"

"How many what?"

"How many doctors and machines?" The defense mechanism: reduce the situation, the emotion, to an equation. Numbers don't hurt.

"As many as they need. They're taking very good care of our Josh." Abbey stopped walking and Donna stopped with her.

"The next room is his," Abbey told her softly, giving Donna enough time to nerve herself for what she would see. "Do you want me to stay with you?"

Donna shook her head, and tried to say, "I'm fine," but she couldn't speak. Abbey looked the young woman, hardly more than a girl, in the eye.

"Stay as long as you need to. Will you be alright by yourself?" Donna nodded again. "I'll send someone to check on you in a bit." She patted Donna on the arm and turned to leave.

"Mrs. Bartlet?" Donna whispered. Abbey turned back to her. "I'm sorry."

The older woman was taken aback. "Whatever for?"

"I'm sure there's somewhere I should be. Everyone is doing something, and I--"

"Donna," Abbey interrupted her. "Someone's taking care of it."

"I know, but I should--"

"Someone's taking care of it. There's nothing else you need to do," Abbey told her firmly.

"Okay," Donna nodded shakily, "Okay, then. I'll be here."

_Et benedictus fructus ventris, Jesus…_Josh shook his head, as if that would dislodge the words. He hadn't listened to that song in ages. Not since that thing with the NSC, years ago. Not since the last time he'd felt so isolated and helpless. Not since the last time he'd run out of the fire.

_But I ran back in. I gave the card back. Doesn't that count for anything?_ He could have handled a tragedy like that, as long as he could have been with his friends. Old memories, long submerged, began to surface. When survivor's guilt is a lifetime old, you want to do nothing to compound it.

He couldn't handle tragedies like this.

National tragedies were abstract. Deaths overseas were names without faces. It was callous—but how else could you survive all of it? He'd begun building a wall around himself a long time ago, fighting to keep it impersonal.

But what had happened, last time, when his wall had been breached? He'd shouted at the president, he'd broken a window, all to make the sirens stop. And this, Donna, the explosion, was so much more personal. He hadn't known the pilot, but Donna was a name with a face and a voice and a life. If Bartlet had been his father, then Donna had been his sister, his best friend, and something else he couldn't put into words.

He slid his fingers across the glass of the small airplane window. He'd already shouted, though thankfully not at the president. Breaking the window of an airplane at thirty thousand feet seemed inadvisable. There were no sirens to stop this time, anyway—only a roaring emptiness that begged to be filled.

_Sancta Maria, Ave Maria, dominus tecum_

If it had been anything else, anyone else, he would have refused to leave. With the White House in such turmoil, with the country screaming for retribution and the world on edge, his place was with the president.

But Josh had screamed for retribution, too, had screamed to fill the emptiness, and look where it had landed him—

The only place he wanted to be.

"If there's some place you'd rather…" Leo had offered. When Josh had refused, Leo had fixed him with that patented McGarry stare and Josh realized the Leo did understand, had understood everything long before Josh had.

But had understanding come too late?

Donna stood before the observation window, staring in at the operating room. There were, indeed, many doctors and machines.

She had used to like reading sad stories, war chronicles and romances and poems. She had liked the sadness, the bittersweet tears, the regret and melancholy of a fallen comrade. And how, she wondered, could she have been so—enthusiastic—over death and grief? Death was real now, and death was close. Far too close.

She couldn't help feeling that this was all just a cruel joke, that the bustle around Josh would stop, and he would sit up from the table, and yell her name in his strange Connecticutian twang, and send her on some errand, and everything would go on just as it had. But it wasn't a joke, and it crueler for that.

Perhaps if she tried hard she could convince herself that the body under the blue sheet was not Josh, But it was, and she couldn't. All she could see of him were glimpses of his hair tucked under the blue cap, or his gray face, or his hand lying motionless at his side. It didn't look like Josh, It didn't feel like Josh, but it was. The same Josh that had hired her and trusted her and taken her back was the same Josh as the one lying on the table. And if the Josh on the table died, then so too would the Josh who teased her and yelled at her and sparred with her.

And all she wanted was that Josh back.

He hadn't been prepared for this, not for this pale, still form that was somehow Donna. He stood next to her bed, looking down at her, sick of the emotions fighting inside his. Donna had always seemed—immortal. Constant. He'd fought for that, had held her back. And not just for professional reasons. Did she know that? He sank into a chair beside her bed. Did she know he was holding her back? Did she know why? He didn't know. But look, now. He'd finally let go of her, let her do a politician's job, and look what happened. He didn't know who he hated more: the bombers for doing this or himself for allowing it.

It was like a Greek tragedy, this entire administration. They couldn't take one step forward without taking two back and falling in a hole. Act one: an attempt on the life of the King's daughter and her lover. Both escape unharmed, but the king is hurt and one of his knights is almost killed. Act two: the king has kept a terrible secret from his people, and his enemies exact revenge. Act three: the king orders the death of a cruel and vicious warlord. The knight protector of one of the court's ladies is killed—killed!--and the lady grieves. Act four: the king must face the consequences of his actions in act three, as his daughter is stolen away. And act five: another lady of the court is attacked and very nearly killed. The knight from act one must abandon his duties and go to her…

There you had it. The Greek tragedy, the Shakespearean pentateuche. Literature students would love to get their hands on it! Think of it—a story so full of human drama: violence and jealousy and revenge, loyalty and deception and acts and consequences. What a brilliant masterpiece of suffering and pathos! And all a true tragedy, because they had always been the source of their own undoing.

And how would it end? Per all tragedies, the lady must die, after her knight had pledged his undying love for her. Then he would succumb to grief and to death and the audience would clap, wipe their eyes, and leave.

Though Donna had compared him—favorably and unfavorably—to many things, a knight was not one of them. But everything else fit. He loved her—of course he loved her. He always had. She'd been his sister, his best friend, his constant companion. But somewhere, sometime, a line had been crossed. And when he'd heard the news yesterday he had realized that losing Donna would hurt so much more than losing a best friend or a sister.

If he was not a knight then Donna was not a Greek heroine, either: she was not immortal, she was not unflawed, she was not permanent. She was human and she was frail and she was broken—and this was no play. He couldn't flip to the end of the script to find out what would happen next. He couldn't rewrite the future with a few cross-outs and penstrokes.

Donna lost track of time as she stood there, watching Josh. Charlie had come by earlier to check on her, but he had left and she was alone again with her thoughts. She had had no idea that anyone could possess so many memories of a single person. Most of them weren't memories, really, just flashes and images, fragments of thousands of conversations. But for a long time, now, the image of Josh that she carried with her would be the one now before her.

The Ave Maria still echoed in her mind, tying him to her, to all of them.

_Ave Maria, gratia plena…benedictus tu in mulieribus…et in hora mortis nostrae…dominus tecum…ora pro nobis peccatoribus…Ave Maria, gratia plena. Ave Maria. Ave Maria. Ave. Ave. Ave._

Finally she could no longer help it. She lowered her head, put her hand to her mouth, and wept.

He had never felt so helpless, so alone. There was nothing he could do except sit, and watch her face, and the rise and fall of her chest, willing her to keep breathing. He wished it had been him. Anything to spare her pain.

Spare her pain…

He'd been the one on the bed once. He'd been the one with the tubes and the monitors and the mask. He'd seen the faces, caught through the haze of shock and anesthesia. Until today he'd thought he'd forgotten it all. Except one. One image: a woman, standing behind a window, looking at him through it, arms across her chest like a shield. Fear and exhaustion had been written on her face, and she was weeping. It wouldn't spare her pain.

The physical pain was nothing next to the heartbreak.

And now, her face was ... empty. Not peaceful. Blank. So much energy, in a single moment. Gone.

_Et in hora mortis nostrae_

_And in the hour of our death…_

Our death. He refused to think it, had shoved the thought to the back of his mind, afraid. Denial was so much easier.

_Et in hora mortis nostrae_

_And if she dies?_ The thought managed to say from its dark corner. _What will you do, Josh?_

_Et in hora mortis nostrae_

_Will you die, too?_

Something ... something in him would.


End file.
